Review of A People Tall and Smooth, by Judith Galblum Pex

Christian, Cross Cultural, Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

A People Tall and Smooth

Stories of Escape from Sudan to Israel

by Judith Galblum Pex

Cladach Publishing, 2011. 219 pages.

A People Tall and Smooth tells the stories of many Sudanese refugees who have ended up in Israel.

Judith Galblum Pex and her husband John run a hostel in Eilat, Israel. She introduces the situation that developed in 2007 with these words:

“People from over one hundred nations intermingle in Israel. Besides Jews from Kazakhstan and Kansas, Burma and Belgrade, Calcutta, Congo and places in between, over a million tourists every year add to the mosaic. Include in the mixture two hundred thousand legal and illegal workers from countries such as China, Thailand, Philippines, Nepal and Ghana, and it’s clear that the average Israeli is used to seeing faces of all colors and shapes.

“In 2007, however, a new group appeared on the scene whose appearance and status was unlike any other till this time. We began to notice men, women, children and babies on the streets in our town of Eilat who were exceptionally black and strikingly tall.

“‘Where do they come from and who are they?’ My husband John and I asked ourselves. ‘What language do they speak?’ Having managed The Shelter Hostel in Eilat on the Red Sea since 1984, we are used to interacting with diverse people groups and were eager to meet these new arrivals.

“Our questions were answered when a tall, dark man walked through our front gate one morning. ‘I’m Gabriel, a refugee from Sudan,’ he introduced himself in perfect English. We then had even more questions. How did these Sudanese get to our city of Eilat in the south of Israel? What made them want to come to Israel of all places? Were they refugees from the genocide in Darfur that we’d been reading about lately?”

Their questions were answered by the refugees that came streaming to them. I was fascinated by how many Sudanese believed this passage from Isaiah 18 applied to them:

“Woe to the land of whirring wings along the rivers of Cush, which sends envoys by sea in papyrus boats over the water. Go swift messengers to a people tall and smooth-skinned, to a people feared far and wide, an aggressive nation of strange speech whose land is divided by rivers … At that time gifts will be brought to the Lord Almighty … to Mount Zion.”

Judith Galblum Pex writes:

“Whatever the original meaning, many Sudanese took this passage as a personal encouragement in their complicated struggle as refugees in Israel. Still, life with uncertainties in Israel was better for them than what they had endured in Africa.”

This book tells the stories of several Sudanese refugees, of different backgrounds, who wound up on their doorstep and became their friends. The writing is a little uneven. I would have preferred less about how they got the stories and the author’s reaction to the stories, and a focus on just the stories themselves. However, the stories are so compelling, you can get past that distraction.

This book contains amazing true stories of powerfully resilient people with a strong faith in God who have come through incredibly difficult events. The stories are both eye-opening and inspiring.

cladach.com

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Source: This review is based on a book sent to me by the publisher.

Review of Still, by Lauren F. Winner

Christian, Musings, Nonfiction Review, True Stories 0

Still

Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis

by Lauren F. Winner

HarperOne, 2012. 244 pages.

This is going to be one of those “reviews” that talks more about me than about the actual book. But it’s a book on musings about faith, and aren’t the best books of musings those that set off all kinds of thinking and musing in your own head? Many different things came together for me, and I need to write them out to get a grasp on them. In fact, in that I relate to the author herself. She says in the Author’s Q & A section at the back:

I’m sure a therapist somewhere could tell you why I do this, dissect my spiritual life on the page for readers. I like to think I’m called to do it. My own spiritual life owes so much to reading, to books; I like to imagine my own books help other people, that they are a debt offering, a gratitude offering. Also, frankly, it is a kind of writing I enjoy — it is “deep play” for me, this kind of writing. Still, I don’t think this book is really about me. If I’ve written it well, it isn’t about me. It’s about the questions: How does a spiritual life change? How do you enter that change?

First, I’ll talk a bit about what the book is. It’s a book of musings, and it’s also a book about middles. Mid-faith. Midlife. It’s a book about crises. Death. Divorce. And it’s a book about after crisis. Here’s another paragraph from that ending section:

I wanted to emphasize the subtle but hugely significant shift from depressed, intense crisis to pacific openness, from no sense of God to a new sense of God. From wrenched and wrecked to calm communion with a God I both know and don’t know. In part the structure was hard because what might be considered the real crisis point . . . is the prelude to the book. The spiritual unraveling, the alienation from God that I felt after my mother’s death and in the midst of my marriage — that is the backstory. Still opens at the tail end of that darkness. The book is not primarily a picture of the darkness. It is a picture of the end of the darkness, of the stumbling out of the darkness into something new.

Here’s what she says about it at the start of the book:

I was carried to the middle of my spiritual life by two particular events: my mother died, and I got married, and the marriage was an unhappy one. Had you asked me before — before my mother got sick, before I found myself to be a person thinking about divorce — I would have told you that these were precisely the circumstances in which one would be glad for religious faith. Faith, after all, is supposed to sustain you through hard times — and I’m sure for many people faith does just that. But it wasn’t so for me. In my case, as everything else was dying, my faith seemed to die, too. God had been there. God had been alive to me. And then, it seemed, nothing was alive — not even God.

Intuition and conversation persuade me that most of us arrive at a spiritual middle, probably we arrive at many middles, and there are many ways to get there. The events that brought me to the middle of my spiritual life were dramatic, they were interruptions, they were grief.

But grief and failure and drama are not the only paths to a spiritual middle. Sometimes a whole life of straightforward churchgoing takes you to a middle. Sometimes it is not about a conversion giving way, or the shock of God’s absence. Sometimes a life of wandering takes you to a middle. Sometimes you come to the middle quietly.

You may arrive at the spiritual middle exhausted, in agony, in what saints of the Christian tradition have called desolation.

Or your journey to the middle may be a little easier, a little calmer — it is not that God is absent — it is, rather, that your spiritual life seems to have faded, like fabric. Some days the fading doesn’t trouble you at all; other days, it seems a hollowing loss. You’re not as interested as you once were in attending to God. You no longer find it easy to make time for church, for prayer. . . .

This book is about the time when the things you thought you knew about the spiritual life turn out not to suffice for the life you are actually living. This book wants to know about that time, and then about the new ways you find, the new glory road that might not be a glory road after all but just an ordinary gravel byway, studded with the occasional bluet, the occasional mica chip.

So that should give you an idea what the book is about. If you’re the sort who likes spiritual musings (as I do) and books who make you think, there is much to enjoy here.

Now for the part about me. It began on a totally different topic. Our pastor’s been doing a series of sermons on politics, and last week he covered homosexuality.

Now I have to say that I was cringing at the very thought of these sermons. I’ve heard some very dogmatic sermons where I don’t think dogma is warranted. I don’t think the Bible is terribly clear on most political topics, and I definitely don’t think that one political party in America has the lock on the “Biblical view.” In fact, I really hate it when someone claims there is a “Biblical view” on most of these political topics.

But the pastor did a good job at doing his best to present two sides to each one of these topics. He never told us, “This is the Biblical view,” and presented different views on the Bible’s teaching on all of the topics, even when he had a clear leaning one way or the other. I appreciated that very much.

Part Two: Thinking about the sermon later, it occurred to me that it’s worlds easier to decide something’s sinful when it’s not something you’re tempted to do. For example, lying isn’t my weakness. My weakness is telling too much truth to too many people. So when my ex-husband lied, it was incredibly easy for me to think, “See! He has NO self-control!” But the fact is, I have no self-control when it comes to lying, because I need none. I’m just not really tempted in that direction.

Since homosexuals haven’t exactly been welcomed into the church, it’s so easy for those left to decide that homosexuality is sinful. We don’t have to look at the other sins that we actually are tempted toward.

Part Three: At Bible Study last night, one person asked what people at church thought of the sermon series. I mentioned a little bit about why I was so glad that two sides were presented. We talked about not being judgmental. Jesus told the woman caught in adultery, “Then neither do I condemn you.” But he also told her, “Go now, and leave your life of sin.” So he was not telling her adultery is fine.

I’d just been reading a novel where a gay person has to deal with a hate-filled Christian group. I said that Jesus started with love. But some in the group said that if you love someone, you are going to worry about them staying in sinful conduct.

Part Four: I was reading this book today, and this thought occurred to me: What if it isn’t sinful?

I know, this will seem pretty obvious to many of my readers. But it seems to me that was what the Pharisees were all about: Telling everyone exactly what was sinful and what was not. And Jesus challenged that dramatically, in many different ways.

What’s more — wait for it — I am not Jesus!

In Romans 14:4, it says, “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.” If I am sinning, I believe that God Himself is going to be working on me, right where I need to be worked on. Can’t I trust him to do that for others?

Then came Part Five. Lauren Winner says this about her divorce: “Among other things, divorcing has shaken up the assumptions I bring to reading scripture. In leaving my marriage, I was doing something that was simply not permissible, not in the way I have always interpreted scripture, and that is something I remain troubled by, confused by — it is not something about which I feel cavalier.”

Now, for someone who is divorced myself, I’m still awfully judgmental about divorce. Because I KNOW what my husband did is wrong! I was hurt by it!

Today, thinking about these issues regarding gay marriage, and thinking that I approve much more of someone who sticks with his gay partner for 30 years than someone who breaks his heterosexual marriage vows after 15 years — well, I realized that I’m awfully judgmental in certain areas myself.

What if I applied that same question to everyone who isn’t me? Even *gasp* my ex-husband?

What if it isn’t sinful?

And what if it isn’t my business even if it is? Shouldn’t I spend my real scrutiny on the activities and attitudes that take up my own time?

As you can see, this author of spiritual musings really got me thinking. She must have been doing something right.

laurenwinner.net
harperone.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/still.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp

Christian, Musings, Nonfiction Review 0

One Thousand Gifts

Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

by Ann Voskamp

Zondervan, 2010. 237 pages.

This is a book about gratitude, a book about counting your blessings. A lot of it I felt was affirmation of what I already knew. I read it slowly, pausing when others had it on hold, so I had to turn it back in to the library for awhile, and also pausing when I’d put it in my pile to post a quotation on my Sonderquotes blog.

Basically, the author writes about how her life was transformed by looking around her and counting one thousand gifts in her life. And then she continued on.

Now, I have a blog, Sonderblessings, devoted to counting my blessings. But in some ways lately, I’d gotten a little off that. My health has been bad since my stroke last summer, and I’m feeling a little lack of focus lately. But when I read the last chapter, something resonated.

I particularly liked the poem she quoted from Teresa of Avila, and what Ann Voskamp said after quoting it:

“That’s His song! I rejoice in you. Come rejoice in Me. The song that plays the world awake, the song that fuels joy: Enjoy Me. Enjoy Me!

“Is there a greater way to love the Giver than to delight wildly in His gifts?”

This last chapter also references some themes that God had been speaking into my life lately. God loves us enough to sing over us. God talks of Himself as our Husband. (When I don’t have a husband any more, all the more reason to turn to God.)

You need to read the book for the full context, but I was delighted to find this section here:

“We fly into the light splitting back the dark. I press my cheek into the cold of the windowpane, wanting the whole of the erupting horizon. Happiness burns like a longing, and over the wing and the whir of the propellers, forty thousand feet over earth, I can hear Him, singing, waking the world. He’s singing that song! The one I really didn’t believe He sang! ‘He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs’ (Zephaniah 3:17).

“He sings love! In the air, over the world, I can see the song, the ardency of the notes pulsing in colors. The curve of the world burns ruby, a jewel prying open the day. And I can see in: Love is the face at the center of our universe. A sacred Smile; Holiness ready to die for intimacy. . . .

“I was afraid? I would have let fears that He wasn’t close, wasn’t passionately caring, wasn’t tenderly tending, keep me from seeing this sunrise bleeding love up over all the world? Now that would have been crazy! Look at that love that orchestrates red over water, that arranges light to play ocean in shimmering lines, that composes sky to gradate, scale of luminosity. And all for us — in this moment! He chose me — us! To be his bride! True, that’s the intellectual premise of the Christian life, but only as the gifts are attended, not as ends but as means to gaze into the heart of God, does the premise become personal, God’s choosing so utterly passionate. So utterly fulfilling.”

And the key to all of this? Counting the gifts God was giving to her. Noticing them. Listening, looking, and seeing God’s love and God’s generosity pouring down.

So Ann Voskamp has given me a focus for the year. Enjoy God. She’s shown that a simple idea like that can transform your life.

onethousandgifts.com
aholyexperience.com
zondervan.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Sex, Mom, & God, by Frank Schaeffer

Biography, Christian, Nonfiction Review, Stand-outs, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Sex, Mom, & God

How the Bible’s Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics — and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway

by Frank Schaeffer

Da Capo Press, 2011. 298 pages.
Starred Review
2011 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #4 Biography

Sex, Mom & God continues along the lines of Frank Schaeffer’s earlier book, Crazy for God. Frank’s parents, Edith and Francis Schaeffer, were my own parents’ heroes, and in these books, Frank Schaeffer reveals that his upbringing was even more extreme than my own. Much more, in fact.

Frank Schaeffer has ended up with a theology much more liberal than my own, but I still appreciate his words in this book. Be careful when you revere Scripture so much, you don’t stop to think if the God you worship would really be behind what you think Scripture is saying.

I do have a very high respect for the Bible. But I still think we would all do well to listen to Frank Schaeffer’s words about any holy Scripture:

‘There is another choice: To admit that the best of any religious tradition depends on the choices its adherents make on how to live despite what their holy books “say,” not because of them. “But where would that leave me?” my former self would have asked. “I’d be adrift in an ocean of uncertainty.” Yes, and perhaps that’s the only honest place to be. Another name for uncertainty is humility. No one ever blew up a mosque, church, or abortion clinic after yelling, “I could be wrong.”’

The book is also entertaining, though I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it. He tells what his mother told him about sex, her take on what the Bible says about sex, and what he learned for himself. The stories about what his Evangelical culture said about sex still give me a fascinated horror. But what can I say? I really like the perspective he has ended up with in writing this book, somehow laughing at the crazy ideas we humans come up with, yet as his subtitle says, managing to love women and Jesus anyway.

I also love it that he shows so much love and respect toward his Mom, who now has Alzheimer’s. He makes it clear that, no matter what her theology, her heart was kind and loving.

A very interesting book, especially for those who grew up Evangelical. I suspect it would also be interesting for those who think that Christians are narrow-minded. Frank Schaeffer definitely does not take a narrow-minded approach himself.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Naked Spirituality, by Brian D. McLaren

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Naked Spirituality

A Life with God in 12 Simple Words

by Brian D. McLaren

HarperOne, 2011. 280 pages.
Starred Review
2011 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #3 Other Nonfiction

I would love to go through this book with a small group Bible study. The subtitle tells us what the book is about. Brian McLaren uses 12 simple words to focus on what’s most important in our life with God. Though coming from a Christian perspective, he tries to transcend religion and talk about what is important in a relationship with God.

He talks about four seasons in our spiritual lives, seasons that we cycle through more than once. For each season, he chooses three words that represent our relationship with God. I think you’ll get an idea of the content of his message if I present the four seasons and the words he looks at for each season, with the practices they represent:

Simplicity: The Springlike Season of Spiritual Awakening

Here: The practice of invocation and presentation, awakening to the presence of God
Thanks: The practice of gratitude and appreciation, awakening to the goodness of God
O: The practice of worship and awe, awakening to the beauty and joy of God

Complexity: The Summerlike Season of Spiritual Strengthening

Sorry: The practice of self-examination and confession, strengthening through failure
Help: The practice of expansion and petition, strengthening through weakness
Please: The practice of compassion and intercession, strengthening through empathy

Perplexity: The Autumnlike Season of Spiritual Surviving

When: The practice of aspiration, exasperation, and desperation, surviving through delay
No: The practice of rage and refusal, surviving through disillusionment
Why: The practice of lament and agony, surviving through abandonment

Harmony: The Winterlike Season of Spiritual Deepening

Behold: The practice of meditation and wonder, deepening by seeing
Yes: The practice of consecration and surrender, deepening by joining
[. . . ]: The practice of contemplation and rest, deepening by being with

Here are some words from the Preface:

“This is a book about getting naked — not physically, but spiritually. It’s about stripping away the symbols and status of public religion — the Sunday-dress version people often call ‘organized religion.’ And it’s about attending to the well-being of the soul clothed only in naked human skin. As a result, it must be a vulnerable book, tender in tone, gentle in touch. You won’t find much in the way of aggressive arguments here, but rather shy experience daring to step into the light. It’s an honest book, and I hope a practical one too, perhaps with some awkward spiritual parallels to what they used to call a ‘marital manual.’

“You won’t need to agree with all the planks of my theological platform. I am a Christian, and all I write flows from my experience in that rich tradition, but you may be of another tradition entirely or of no known tradition at all. Instead of seeking theological agreement, this book invites you to experiment with the naked experience of God that provides the raw material from which all worthwhile theology derives.”

Here’s what he says about developing the spiritual practices:

“In the coming chapters, I would like to introduce you to twelve spiritual practices that have passed the simple, doable, and durable test for me. They are part of our ancient traditions, and they can provide twenty-first people like you and me with a basic curriculum for our spiritual novitiate. You can think of them as twelve stretches for runners, twelve moves in martial arts, twelve basic positions in yoga, or twelve warm-up exercises a musician might employ. You can do them in groups, and I hope you will, but you can begin on your own, in private, today. Like learning your first few chords on a guitar, you’ll find it amazingly easy to begin to play with these practices. But like expanding on those basic chords in order to become a guitar virtuoso, you’ll also find these twelve practices endlessly engaging and challenging.”

This is a book I’m going to want to read again, and I’d love to go through with a small group. Because it’s about practices — about living out your life with God.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Faith and Will, by Julia Cameron

Christian, Musings, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Faith and Will

Weathering the Storms in Our Spiritual Lives

by Julia Cameron

Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, New York, 2009. 221 pages.
Starred Review
2011 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #1 Other Nonfiction

A big huge thank you to my sister Becky for giving me this book. It was kind of funny: I had already checked it out and was posting quotations from it in Sonderquotes when she gave me a copy. It was good to own a copy, because I think I have pulled more quotations from it than any other book I’ve read since I started posting Sonderquotes. So I’ve taken a very long time reading it, with all the time it’s spent in my Sonderquotes queue, and it’s good the library copies were available to others during that time.

Julia Cameron begins the book this way:

“I would like to begin at the beginning, but I do not know what the beginning is anymore. I am a person at midlife. I am a believer who is trying one more time to believe. That is to say I am caught off guard by life and by feelings of emptiness.

“I want there to be more reassurance than I currently feel that we are on the right path. By ‘we’ I mean God and me. I have been trying consciously to work with God for twenty-five years now, and a great deal has been made of my life that I think has a lot of value — but I am one more time asking for something to be made of me and it that I myself can hold on to. Me. Personally. Not as some abstract but as a genuine comfort.

“I am a writer and a teacher — “worthy” things, but I am not feeling my worth in them right now. I must again come to some relationship to God that will enable me to pursue my career as an outward manifestation of inwardly held values. In other words, what needs mending here is probably not the outward form — I suspect that after a great deal of soul-searching I would still come back to being a writer and a teacher — but the inward connection. I must feel I am doing what God would have me do.”

What follows is a book of musings and meditations, talking about faith, guidance, and choices. There are no chapter divisions, so the book rambles a bit, but I found the rambling tracked well with my own thinking. She reassured me and encouraged me that God is good and God’s will for us is good, creative, and joyful.

I pulled lots (and am still pulling) and lots and lots of quotations from the book that resonated for me. Read through some of these on Sonderquotes, and you will get a good sense of whether this book would delight you as it has delighted me.

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Source: This review is based on a book given to me by my sister.

Review of Love Wins, by Rob Bell

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Love Wins

A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived

by Rob Bell

HarperOne (HarperCollins), 2011. 202 pages.
Starred Review

I first read that Love Wins was coming out when I was sitting at the Information Desk at the library, reading a publishing newsletter about upcoming titles. I couldn’t restrain myself: I burst out with a “Yes!” I had to explain to my bemused co-worker how happy I was that a mainstream evangelical writer was writing about Universalism. When I quietly believed myself that all will (eventually) be saved, that love wins in the end, well, those who found out seemed tolerant but a little sorry for me with my silly ideas. I knew that if Rob Bell wrote about it, it would come to the attention of many people whom I respect.

I ordered the book right away. And of course I was coming from a position of whole-heartedly agreeing with him from the start. So I can’t really judge if this book is convincing for people who do believe that unbelievers will burn in hell with unending torment.

Personally, I think this book was written more for people who are looking at Christianity from the outside — to tell them that the Christian faith is not as exclusive and judgmental as they may have thought. And I think it presents that message wonderfully.

Christians who are considering these ideas, but don’t think they are Biblical, might have more of their questions answered reading Universalism, the Prevailing Doctrine of the Christian Church During Its First Five Hundred Years: With Authorities and Extracts, by John Wesley Hanson, or The Inescapable Love of God, by Thomas Talbott.

However, I was right: my pastor actually mentioned this book in his sermon, when talking about acceptance. He had not read the book, but said a little bit about the controversy and that Rob Bell says that love will eventually win for every person. He said that he does not think Rob Bell is right, but I loved this comment he made: “Shouldn’t we all want him to be right?” Shouldn’t we want Love to win for every person?

I loved that he said that, because one of the things that has come out of this belief for me is indeed a greater acceptance of others. And since, even with the current mainstream view, none of us knows another person’s heart, and who is saved or not or will be saved or not, we should not presume to write off anyone.

But another reason I loved that response:

When I tell other Christians how I came to the belief that God will eventually save everyone, that hell is redemptive not retributive, I start by saying I didn’t think I could believe that, because I didn’t think it’s what the Bible teaches. But it dawned on me that’s what George MacDonald was saying, and he clearly knew the Bible well, including studying the original languages, and he clearly believed that’s what the Bible taught. So I read the whole New Testament with new eyes. It seemed to me that there are many, many verses that, taken at face value, really seem to teach that all will be saved. (Such as “At the name of Jesus every knee will bow,” or “As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Look up “all” or “every” in a concordance to find more.) There are definitely some verses that need to be explained away. But those who believe in unending torment also have many verses they need to explain away.

All in all, when I looked at the Biblical writings, I felt that the case for Universalism was just as strong as the case against it. (Now I think it’s stronger, but that was when I was first studying it.) At this point, I thought I should choose the belief that has the higher view of God.

Now, this is the point where my friends tend to object. They say that I shouldn’t base my judgment on my own wishful thinking. Or they get offended that I’m saying it’s a “higher view of God.”

So that’s why I loved my pastor saying “Shouldn’t we all want it to be true?” To me, that question admits that if God could really save everyone in the end, that would be a wonderful thing, to the great glory of God.

So is God not as big as we can imagine?

Okay, all of that is beside the point. What does the book itself say?

Now, the book is written in a conversational style. It’s not at all rigorous like Universalism, the Prevailing Doctrine of the Christian Church During Its First Five Hundred Years: With Authorities and Extracts, by John Wesley Hanson. But the author makes a strong case that the church should be making a difference in the world.

The author gives his purpose for writing in the Preface:

“First, I believe that Jesus’s story is first and foremost about the love of God for every single one of us. It is a stunning, beautiful, expansive love, and it is for everybody, everywhere….

“There are a growing number of us who have become acutely aware that Jesus’s story has been hijacked by a number of other stories, stories Jesus isn’t interested in telling, because they have nothing to do with what he came to do. The plot has been lost, and it’s time to reclaim it.

“I’ve written this book for all those, everywhere, who have heard some version of the Jesus story that caused their pulse rate to rise, their stomach to churn, and their heart to utter those resolute words, ‘I would never be a part of that.’

“You are not alone.
There are millions of us.

“This love compels us to question some of the dominant stories that are being told as the Jesus story. A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’s message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.

“And so this book.

“Second, I’ve written this book because the kind of faith Jesus invites us into doesn’t skirt the big questions about topics like God and Jesus and salvation and judgment and heaven and hell, but takes us deep into the heart of them….

“And then, last of all, please understand that nothing in this book hasn’t been taught, suggested, or celebrated by many before me. I haven’t come up with a radical new teaching that’s any kind of departure from what’s been said an untold number of times. That’s the beauty of the historic, orthodox Christian faith. It’s a deep, wide, diverse stream that’s been flowing for thousands of years, carrying a staggering variety of voices, perspectives, and experiences.

“If this book, then, does nothing more than introduce you to the ancient, ongoing discussion surrounding the resurrected Jesus in all its vibrant, diverse, messy, multivoiced complexity — well, I’d be thrilled.”

There’s lots more, really great stuff in this book. I’m posting lots of quotations on Sonderquotes, and plan to read through the book again, more slowly this time. I’ll write out one more passage here that I like very much:

“So when the gospel is diminished to a question of whether or not a person will ‘get into heaven,’ that reduces the good news to a ticket, a way to get past the bouncer and into the club.

“The good news is better than that.

“This is why Christians who talk the most about going to heaven while everybody else goes to hell don’t throw very good parties.

“When the gospel is understood primarily in terms of entrance rather than joyous participation, it can actually serve to cut people off from the explosive, liberating experience of the God who is an endless giving circle of joy and creativity.

“Life has never been about just ‘getting in.’ It’s about thriving in God’s good world. It’s stillness, peace, and that feeling of your soul being at rest, while at the same time it’s about asking things, learning things, creating things, and sharing it all with others who are finding the same kind of joy in the same good world.

“Jesus calls disciples to keep entering into this shared life of peace and joy as it transforms our hearts, until it’s the most natural way to live that we can imagine. Until it’s second nature. Until we naturally embody and practice the kind of attitudes and actions that will go on in the age to come. A discussion about how to ‘just get into heaven’ has no place in the life of a disciple of Jesus, because it’s missing the point of it all.

“An entrance understanding of the gospel rarely creates good art. Or innovation. Or a number of other things. It’s a cheap view of the world, because it’s a cheap view of God. It’s a shriveled imagination….

“Witnessing, evangelizing, sharing your faith — when you realize that God has retold your story, you are free to passionately, urgently, compellingly tell the story because you’ve stepped into a whole new life and you’re moved and inspired to share it. When your God is love, and you have experienced this love in flesh and blood, here and now, then you are free from guilt and fear and the terrifying, haunting ominous voice that whispers over your shoulder, ‘You’re not doing enough.’ The voice that insists God is, in the end, a slave driver.

“Have nothing to do with that God….

“Let’s be very clear, then: we do not need to be rescued from God. God is the one who rescues us from death, sin, and destruction. God is the rescuer….

“There is another dimension to the violent, demanding God, the one people need Jesus to rescue them from. We see it in the words of the older brother, when he says he ‘never even disobeyed.’ You can sense the anxiety in his defense, the paranoid awareness that he believed his father was looking over his shoulder the whole time, waiting and watching to catch him in disobedience. The violent God creates profound worry in people. Tension. Stress. This God is supposed to bring peace, that’s how the pitch goes, but in the end this God can easily produce followers who are paralyzed and catatonic, full of fear. Whatever you do, don’t step out of line or give this God any reason to be displeased, because who knows what will be unleashed.

“Jesus frees us from that, because his kind of love simply does away with fear. Once again, the words of the father in the story, the one who joyously, generously declares: ‘You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.’…

“Jesus meets and redeems us in all the ways we have it together and in all the ways we don’t, in all the times we proudly display for the world our goodness, greatness, and rightness, and in all of the ways we fall flat on our faces.”

And here’s the final paragraph, which expresses my wish, too:

“May you experience this vast,
expansive, infinite, indestructible love
that has been yours all along.
May you discover that this love is as wide
as the sky and as small as the cracks in
your heart no one else knows about.
And may you know,
deep in your bones,
that love wins.”

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Source: This review is based on my own book, purchased via Amazon.com.

Review of Universalism, the Prevailing Doctrine of the Christian Church During Its First Five Hundred Years: With Authorities and Extracts, by John Wesley Hanson

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Universalism, the Prevailing Doctrine of the Christian Church During Its First Five Hundred Years: With Authorities and Extracts

by John Wesley Hanson

Universalist Publishing House, Boston and Chicago, 1899. 321 pages.
Starred Review

The title of this book well sums up what it’s about. This is not a book for the general reader. This is a reprint of a book in the public domain, originally published in 1899. The language is dense and old-fashioned.

When it first dawned on me that George MacDonald was teaching that all will (eventually) be saved, I was surprised. He clearly believed this is what the Bible teaches. But how could he think that? Doesn’t the Bible teach that the wicked will perish and burn eternally? Isn’t that what all good Christians think?

So, I reread the Bible and saw how much was open to interpretation. At the time, I thought the case for either view was about equal. (Since then, I think it’s actually stronger for universalism.) I chose to believe the view that I thought had a higher view of God. If it bothers me that God would send people to burn in hell forever and ever, should I believe in that God? It also meant that I can’t write off other people nearly as easily as before.

But I still thought I was bucking tradition believing this. So I was amazed and delighted to read this book, showing with many examples that the early church believed all will be saved. That the “mainstream” view was not at all mainstream until about 500 years after Christ. In fact, when the church was dominated by those who spoke Greek, it was also dominated by Universalism.

Now, this book is dense, as I said. It’s only for people like me, whose biggest obstacle in believing in Universalism is thinking that it’s not Biblical, and is against the mainstream view of the church. This book shows that not only did a deeply spiritual man like George MacDonald think that Universalism is Biblical, so did Christ’s first followers. It’s for people who deeply believe in the authority of Scripture.

I had to laugh when I read this paragraph in the Foreword:

“The first form of his manuscript contained a thousand copious notes, with citations of original Greek and Latin, but such an array was thought by judicious friends too formidable to attract the average reader, as well as too voluminous, and he has therefore retained only a fraction of the notes he had prepared.”

I laughed because the book is still formidable indeed, and not at all for the average reader. But there’s excellent information here, and Christians who wonder about the Biblical basis for Universalism will have their eyes opened.

Also in the Foreword, the author states:

“The purpose of this book is to present some of the evidence of the prevalence in the early centuries of the Christian church, of the doctrine of the final holiness of all mankind. The author has endeavored to give the language of the early Christians, rather than to paraphrase their words, or state their sentiments in his own language. He has also somewhat copiously quoted the statements of modern scholars, historians and critics, of all shades of opinion, instead of condensing them with his own pen.”

This is why the book is formidable, but it’s also why it is most convincing and thorough.

The author’s purpose is not to present the Scriptural evidence for Universalism. “Neither is it the purpose of the author of this book to write a history of the doctrine; but his sole object is to show that those who obtained their religion almost directly from the lips of its author, understood it to teach the doctrine of universal salvation.”

When my pastor talked about Love Wins, by Rob Bell, which teaches Universalism, he said that he did not agree with Rob Bell’s conclusion. But I loved that he said, “Shouldn’t we want to believe it?” In many ways this book gives me permission to believe that all will be saved. After all, if the early church fathers believed it, how can I possibly contend that it’s not Biblical?

The book goes into great, convincing, and, yes, tedious detail. I’ll present a few of the points.

First, he looks at the oldest creeds. There’s simply nothing about everlasting punishment.

“Thus the credal declarations of the Christian church for almost four hundred years are entirely void of the lurid doctrine with which they afterwards blazed for more than a thousand years. The early creeds contain no hint of it, and no whisper of condemnation of the doctrine of universal restoration as taught by Clement, Origen, the Gregories, Basil the Great, and multitudes besides.”

He does look at the teachings of the church fathers listed above in great detail. I’ll list some paragraphs that give some insight into his arguments:

“The talismanic word of the Alexandrian fathers, as of the New Testament, was Father. This word, as now, unlocked all mysteries, solved all problems, and explained all the enigmas of time and eternity. Holding God as Father, punishment was held to be remedial, and therefore restorative, and final recovery from sin universal.”

“The Greek Fathers derived their Universalism directly and soley from the Greek Scriptures. Nothing to suggest the doctrine existed in Greek or Latin literature, mythology, or theology; all current thought on matters of eschatology was utterly opposed to any such view of human destiny. And, furthermore, the unutterable wickedness, degradation and woe that filled the world would have inclined the early Christians to the most pessimistic view of the future consistent with the teachings of the religion they had espoused. To know that, in those dreadful times, they derived the divine optimism of universal deliverance from sin and sorrow from the teachings of Christ and his apostles, should predispose every modern to agree with them.”

I thought this part about the Greek words used was fascinating:

“When our Lord spoke, the doctrine of unending torment was believed by many of those who listened to his words, and they stated it in terms and employed others, entirely different, in describing the duration of punishment, from the terms afterward used by those who taught universal salvation and annihilation, and so gave to the terms in question the sense of unlimited duration.

“For example, the Pharisees, according to Josephus, regarded the penalty of sin as torment without end, and they stated the doctrine in unambiguous terms. The called it eirgmos aidios (eternal imprisonment) and timorion adialeipton (endless torment), while our Lord called the punishment of sin aionion kolasin (age-long chastisement).

“The language of Josephus is used by the profane Greeks, but is never found in the New Testament connected with punishment. Josephus, writing in Greek to Jews, frequently employs the word that our Lord used to define the duration of punishment (aionios), but he applies it to things that had ended or that will end. Can it be doubted that our Lord placed his ban on the doctrine that the Jews had derived from the heathen by never using their terms describing it, and that he taught a limited punishment by employing words to define it that only meant limited duration in contemporaneous literature?”

The author goes on to give many examples of the different terms used in Greek at the time of Christ.

“Had our Lord intended to inculcate the doctrine of the Pharisees, he would have used the terms by which they described it. But his word defining the duration of punishment was aionion, while their words are aidion, adialeipton and athanaton. Instead of saying with Philo and Josephus, thanaton athanaton, deathless or immortal death; eirgmon aidion, eternal imprisonment; aidion timorion, eternal torment; and thanaton ateleuteton, interminable death, he used aionion kolasin, an adjective in universal use for limited duration, and a noun denoting suffering issuing in amendment. The word by which our Lord describes punishment is the word kolasin, which is thus defined: “Chastisement, punishment.” “The trimming of the luxuriant branches of a tree or vine to improve it and make it fruitful.” “The act of clipping or pruning — restriction, restraint, reproof, check, chastisement.” “The kind of punishment which tends to the improvement of the criminal is what the Greek philosophers called kolasis or chastisement.”

This close look at the Greek background makes it all the more interesting that the teaching of Universalism prevailed while the church fathers were primarily Greek-speaking.

Some other interesting points:

“Not a writer among those who describe the heresies of the first three hundred years intimates that Universalism was then a heresy, though it was believed by many, if not by a majority, and certainly by the greatest of the fathers.

“Not a single creed for five hundred years expresses any idea contrary to universal restoration, or in favor of endless punishment.”

“While the councils that assembled in various parts of Christendom, anathematized every kind of doctrine they supposed to be heretical, no ecumenical council, for more than five hundred years, condemned Universalism, though it had been advocated in every century by the principal scholars and most revered saints.”

“The first defense of Christianity against Infidelity (Origen against Celsus) puts the defense on Universalistic grounds. Celsus charged the Christians’ God with cruelty, because he punished with fire. Origen replied that God’s fire is curative; that he is a “Consuming Fire,” because he consumes sin and not the sinner.”

Believe me, the author goes into excruciating detail to back up these, and many other points. He looks at a multitude of ancient writings and commentaries on the writings.

So, reader, you will know if this book would be interesting to you. It was definitely interesting to me, though I had to take it slowly! But I feel much much less out of the mainstream than I did before. To me, it definitely establishes that a Christian can believe the Bible and still believe in Universalism. After all, is there anyone who would say those early church fathers were not Christians? And if those native Greek speakers believed the Bible taught universalism, who are we to say different?

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Review of Let the Whole Earth Sing Praise, by Tomie dePaola

Christian, Contemporary, Good for the Very Young, Picture Book Review 0

Let the Whole Earth Sing Praise

by Tomie dePaola

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2011. 30 pages.

In June, I got to see Tomie dePaola receive the Laura Ingall Wilders Medal for his substantial and lasting contribution to children’s literature. I was struck by the fact that he’s a man who radiates love and joy. In this lovely little book, you can share some of that joy with your young children.

The text in this book is very simple and overtly religious, with pages that say things like this:

“Dogs, cats, all animals and creeping things on earth, praise God.”

The colorful pictures show the parts of creation named as they praise and bless God. I love that an outstanding children’s illustrator created this book for a big commercial publisher. This is a lovely little book for parents of any religion that worships God to share with their young children.

It’s simple. It’s joyful. It’s lovely.

Praise God!

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Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Heaven Is For Real, by Todd Burpo

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Heaven Is For Real

A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

by Todd Burpo
with Lynn Vincent

Thomas Nelson, 2010. 163 pages.
Starred Review

I gobbled up this book in one afternoon. It’s not long, and the story it tells is truly amazing.

My first reaction was that this story would be a hard one for an atheist to explain away. However, I was quickly informed that is not the case. This concerns a little boy’s testimony. As for me, I think his way of talking about it totally rings true, but the fact that he was so young does allow skeptics to propose that he may have been swayed without realizing it.

However, if you do believe in Heaven, this book will encourage you tremendously. And anyone who has suffered a miscarriage, or lost a beloved parent will find themselves incredibly touched.

Colton first gave them a clue that something unusual had happened when they drove to the city where he almost died.

“‘Do you remember the hospital, Colton?’ Sonja asked.

“‘Yes, Mommy, I remember,’ he said. ‘That’s where the angels sang to me.'”

A little while later, they asked him more about it.

“Then he grew serious. ‘Dad, Jesus had the angels sing to me because I was so scared. They made me feel better.’

“Jesus?

“I glanced at Sonja again and saw that her mouth had dropped open. I turned back to Colton. ‘You mean Jesus was there?’

“My little boy nodded as though reporting nothing more remarkable than seeing a ladybug in the front yard. ‘Yeah, Jesus was there.’

“‘Well, where was Jesus?’

Colton looked me right in the eye. ‘I was sitting in Jesus’ lap.'”

That’s in the intro, to give you an idea of what’s in store. Then they tell about their crisis, where it looked like their four-year-old son was really going to die. Appendicitis wasn’t diagnosed correctly, and by the time a doctor at a second hospital figured it out, it should have been too late.

Colton’s father, Todd Burpo, is a pastor. But this was the latest of a series of trials, and he found himself yelling at God. “Where are you? Is this how you treat your pastors?! Is it even worth it to serve you?”

But miraculously, Colton recovered. And it was enough of a miracle that they noticed an awful lot of nurses coming to his room and just staring at him in amazement. One of them pulled his Dad aside.

“‘Mr. Burpo, I’ve worked as a nurse here for many years,’ she said. ‘I’m not supposed to tell you this, but we were told not to give your family any encouragement. They didn’t think Colton was going to make it. And when they tell us people aren’t going to make it, they don’t.'”

It wasn’t until four months later that Colton told them about hearing the angels sing.

“It was that conversation in which Colton said that he ‘went up out of’ his body, that he had spoken with angels, and had sat in Jesus’ lap. And the way we knew he wasn’t making it up was that he was able to tell us what we were doing in another part of the hospital: ‘You were in a little room by yourself praying, and Mommy was in a different room and she was praying and talking on the phone.’

“Not even Sonja had seen me in that little room, having my meltdown with God.”

They continue to ask Colton about his experiences, trying not to ask leading questions. They found out things from a child’s perspective that matched what they would expect from the Bible.

Some of the things he said were very striking. I loved this one:

“Suddenly, he piped up again. ‘Daddy, remember when I yelled for you in the hospital when I waked up?’

“How could I forget? It was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. ‘Of course I do,’ I said.

“‘Well, the reason I was yelling was that Jesus came to get me. He said I had to go back because he was answering your prayer. That’s how come I was yelling for you.’

“Suddenly, my knees felt weak underneath me. I flashed back to my prayers alone, raging at God, and my prayers in the waiting room, quiet and desperate. I remembered how scared I was, agonizing over whether Colton would hang on through the surgery, whether he’d live long enough for me to see his precious face again. Those were the longest, darkest ninety minutes of my life.

“And Jesus answered my prayer? Personally? After I had yelled at God, chastising him, questioning his wisdom and his faithfulness?”

Later Colton had more bombshells for them. He talked about meeting his sister — the child he’d never known about, who had miscarried. He claimed to have met her in heaven. He also spent time talking with his Dad’s father, Pop, whom he had also never met on earth. He didn’t recognize a picture of Pop as an old man — but then later he spotted a picture of Pop young and newly married — and Colton knew him right away!

I also love the way he tells his Dad the pastor that the Holy Spirit “shoots down power for you when you’re talking in church.” He says the Holy Spirit showed him, that Colton got to watch the Holy Spirit “shooting down power.”

But I think my personal favorite of all the things Colton says is when he’s describing God’s throne:

“‘It was big, Dad . . . really, really big, because God is the biggest one there is. And he really, really loves us, Dad. You can’t belieeeeve how much he loves us!'”

Read this book to be encouraged and inspired. At the end of the book, Colton sums up what he wants to tell people:

“I want them to know that heaven is for real.”

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Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.